Author Archive for barneyb

Well, it looks like Peggy and Justin are back at it again over at www.TheGorvertLife.com (note the URL change: hawaiiboisverts.com was replaced as it’s inaccurate). Amazingly, while Justin posted nine hours ago and got comments from Memere and Heather, Peggy’s post from over five hours ago is still Memere-free. Boggles the mind. ; )

So we’re sitting on the couch before putting Lindsay to bed, and
Heather’s got Emery sitting on her lap, facing out. The TV’s on,
and all is peaceful.

As some backstory, Emery’s finally started
making intentional vocalizations, both in response to things he likes,
and talking from others. Smiling too.

So Heather starts
flipping channels, and during the course of a relatively brief span of
time, he makes three distinct "happy" noises. They coincided with
crocodiles, Ted Nugent, and steak. Our little boy.

It’s unclear to me why going to work after getting my teeth pulled
is such unexpected behaviour. As well as Carrie and Mom, Heather,
Chloe, and everyone at my office thought the same thing. It’s not
as if I don’t understand how to recover from trauma (I did spend 10
years balancing my body at the edge of it’s capabilities), or am a
glutton for pain (my body’s voracious appetite for Percocet
demonstrates that). I just had stuff to do, and as long as I was
able to do it, I figured I would. And yes, I left work and went
home for the day before I took the narcotics. I’m not an idiot either.

The procedure was straightforward throughout. Started with the
prerequisite "you have beautiful teeth" that I get every time, then
numbed me up, ranked on my jaw for 30 minutes (with three brief pauses:
one to sit up and swallow, and two to cut my bottom teeth in half), and
then I was done. Moist gauze came out in 45 minutes, novacaine
wore off about 2.5 hours later, aside from the front-left corner of my
tongue and lips which persisted for two more hours, rode home an hour
and half after that, took some drugs and then slept for a couple
hours. Now I’m awake, a little achy (suprisingly, at least to me,
is that it’s my jaw joint - which surely has a better name - that’s the
most sore, not the tooth holes), with imperceptible swelling, and otherwise all good.

So Lindsay’s had a rather rough last couple days. Saturday
evening, while we were getting ready for dinner, she was climbing down
from her bookcase and suddenly started screaming. Quickly obvious
that it was her arm; the same one she’d hurt at my cousin Matt’s
wedding in June. Unlike at the wedding, however, her arm didn’t
get better within half an hour or so, so after letting her eat what
dinner she could, my mom and I took her to the ER. Not really an
emergency, per se, but not a lot of doctors offices are open at 8pm on
Saturdays.

After working our way through the receptionist, the
triage nurse, and the paperwork lady, we finally went back to see the
doc, and he said it’s most likely "nursemaid’s elbow", which is
apparently very common in in kids from when they start getting really
active up until age 4 or so. The triage nurse (with nothing more
than a "how it happened" said that’s probably what it was, so
definitely not rare). Basically some of the tendons pop out of
place and it’s crazy painful to move around. The cause is
hyperextension and/or twising, and apparently nursemaids carring
infants are common adults to be affected. Seems weird, but
whatever.

While we were waiting for the doc, the nurse was doing
some preliminary stuff, and we got her to listen to Lindsay’s
heartbeat. She’s been obsessed since seeing the stethescope at
the hostpital after Emery was born, and the nurse even let her listen
herself. A high point in what had thus far been a hellish evening.

Next
stop was X-Ray, where they do everything digitally. Just have a
pad that they shoot the x-rays into and it makes a digital image, just
like a digital camera. Pretty nice not having to switch film and
all that. Again, Lindsay didn’t care too much for moving her arm
all around, but like a "big strong girl" she is, she sacked it up and
did very well. Best of all, she got a piglet sticker from the
tech, which she insisted on holding in her good hand and looking at for
the rest of the evening.

Once back at her bed, the doc came back
and confirmed that there was nothing broken, and said the fix should be
as simple as pinching her elbow in a certain place and twisting/lifting
her forearm to coax the tendons to snap back into place.
Squeeze-twist-pop, and back to normal. We got a blue popsicle for
Lindsay, which she thoroughly enjoyed while waiting to make sure she
was going to start using it so we could leave.

Sure enough, after
a couple minutes, we gave her a paper cup and asked her to crush it,
and holding it in the good hand, lifted the bad arm’s fist and squished
it right down. But she didn’t open her fingers. So we tried
counting my fingers: ten. And then her fingers: five on the good
hand. Only two on the bad hand though, her thumb and index
finger. But she wasn’t snatching her arm away any more, so I
rolled it over to uncurl her fingers and found the reason. One
solitary kernel of corn, smashed in there from dinner three hours
before.

We were discharged within a few minutes, and drove home with one tired girl who was ready for bed.

Update:
This morning, Heather called me at the office, saying she thought she’d
done the same thing again, but to her other arm. I tried to
explain what the doc did over the phone, but it didn’t work, so she
came in to see me at the office, and sure enough.
Squeeze-twist-pop, and back to normal. I explained to Heather in
person, using my arm, and hopefully she’ll be set to deal with future
occurrences that I’m not around for.

I finally uploaded our photos from the past week into two new galleries, cleverly named Emery @ Hospital and Emery @ Home. The Emery Isaac
gallery that Chloe posted for us last weekend included through the
post-op recovery room, and the @ Hospital gallery is from the
‘permanent’ room where they stayed until Sunday.

All’s well, as
near as can be told. He’s still a little yellowish from the
newborn jaundice, but still seems well. Try to get him some sun
this weekend, since that’s supposed to help.

Heather’s also doing
quite well. Still has to be careful with the scar, but it’s
healing well, and aside from the cuts, seems to be pretty much back to
100%. Or at least as close to 100% as can be expected while
nursing a 1 week old who only ever sleeps four hours at a time.
We’ll see how quickly the tiredness catches up after Memere leaves next
weekend and she has to chase Lindsay around as well. ; )

One week down, a few thousand to go. More updates will be coming, but we’re still settling in…

So we’re all sitting on the floor while the lasagna finishes
cooking. We’ve flipped through the "Big Book" numerous times, and
while Lindsay repeatedly kissed the racoons, I started playing with a
couple quaters I had in my pocket. Needless to say, Lindsay
wanted them, and so I gave them to her. She decided that one was
enough, and dropped the other one, and climbed into her "couch".
Picking up the other one, I reached over and "pulled it out of her
ear". Very unimpressed, though she gladly took it from me.

A
little later, Heather was playing the "put my hands behind my back, put
the quarter in one, and make Lindsay guess which hand" game. That
only takes one quater, of course, and after a few runs, Lindsay sat
down, and Heather asked her where the other quarter was (I had it in my
hand, having picked it up a bit earlier). She looks around
briefly…….. "Ear?" Needless to say, the quarter magically
appeared from her ear again.

I just realized that I neglected to restart my newsreader (I use SharpReader,
a very nice little .NET app) after I rebooted a couple weeks ago, and
have consequently completely missed the past two weeks of blog
activity. So it is that I am writing about Heather’s "Blah" post from the 9th a week late.

I just wanted to reassure everyone that Heather was, in fact, a
nauseated, bi-polar, forgetful, ice cream and dill pickles scarfing,
lunatic with Lindsay. And as for not showing until 6 months,
well, that’s just as much of a lie. I recall her wearing her
rubber banded pants for quite a while last time, before busting out the
maternity capris. It’s amazing what she has forgotten in a year
and a half.

Fortunately, just about the time Lindsay started to affect her balance
enough that she would run into things when she intended to go around
them, all the symptoms except forgetfulness disappeared. Needless
to say, it was a welcome change for me, since I have to live with her
and her insanity. Thankfully, she’s recently started hitting door
frames again, so it’s nearing that time in Hangnail’s run.